About us

CATS centre combines the expertise from the departments of Psychology and Criminology at Middlesex University to provide high quality research, consultancy, practice training, media dissemination, continuing professional development, knowledge exchange and learning in a broad range of abuse and trauma related topics across the lifespan. We use attachment, stress and lifespan models in the context of health, social care and criminal justice to inform practice and policy. We utilise a range of research methods including those online for the digital age.

Our centre is located in a historic Grade II* listed building, a former home of the Church Farmhouse Museum, and the oldest surviving dwelling in Hendon, North London.

We provide service evaluations in a wide range of areas, including: child safeguarding and Looked After services; police practice with vulnerable victims; educational services around abuse prevention; interagency working of professionals; youth services.

Intra-familial child sexual abuse, young people and trust in the police, child victims in the investigative process, child trafficking, community support for offenders and their families (view projects).

Our Team

Prof Antonia Bifulco is a psychologist who has worked in the area of clinical disorder and psycho-social risk across the lifespan since 1980. Her PhD studies at Bedford College, University of London focused on the long term impact of childhood loss of mother on depression. Her career developed in the Social Research Team headed by Prof George Brown and Tirril Harris, investigating life stress, vulnerability and depression in women. In 1990 on Prof Brown’s retirement she took over the team renamed the ‘Lifespan Research Group’ and completed an MRC programme grant. The team continued with a more applied focus after that time, working together with voluntary and statutory health and social care agencies to help improve assessment and practice.

Prof Bifulco’s research has been published widely in international peer reviewed journals. Her book co-authored with CATS member Geraldine Thomas Understanding Adult Attachment in Families (2012, Routledge) summarises 30 years of academic and applied research. In addition, Wednesday’s Child (Bifulco & Moran, 1998, Routledge) is still a primary text for students and researchers in the area of long terms effect of childhood neglect and abuse, recently translated into Italian. The Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse (CECA) interview was developed by Toni Bifulco as a standardised interview tool for collecting information on abuse in early life. This is increasingly used by practitioners in forensic, social work and psychological fields. Another publication Entrepreneurship for Everyone (2009, Mellor, Coulton, Chick, Bifulco, Mellor & Fisher, Sage) examines the issue of knowledge exchange and how university research can be used to help develop practice.

Prof Bifulco is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, is an associate fellow of the BPS and is a Chartered Psychologist, and has a visiting Professorship at Palermo University, Italy.

Spence, Ruth and Bunn, Amanda and Nunn, Stephen and Hosang, Georgina and Kagan, Lisa and Fisher, Helen L. and Taylor, Matthew and Bifulco, Antonia (2015) Measuring life events and their association with clinical disorder: a protocol for development of an online approach. JMIR Research Protocols, 4 (3). e83.

Schimmenti, Adriano and Bifulco, Antonia (2015) Linking lack of care in childhood to anxiety disorders in emerging adulthood: the role of attachment styles. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 20 (1).